The Status of Women in the Academy

Although women have made great strides in academia in the last few years, they still trail behind men in terms of numbers hired, speed of promotion and salaries. They still face subtle discrimination. Only recently have major research institutions begun to address the issues and make a concerted effort to increase the hiring of women. This paper will look at the status of women in academia and what is being done to try and even the playing field.

When Robin Wilson wrote about the inequalities of women in academia in 2004, she cited data from 2001-2002 which showed that women made up roughly 60 percent of the undergraduate population, and for the first time, more doctorates were earned by women than by men at American universities (Wilson, 2004). At the same time, while women have made inroads in English and Psychology, more than 70 percent of professors teaching at America's top research institutions overall were men. At the entry level, men still made up almost 60 percent of the assistant professors that year at research universities, according to a survey by the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles.

At two-year research institutions, women accounted for 42 percent of full professors and at four year liberal arts colleges women accounted for 23 percent of full professors in 2001 (Gill, 2005). For each year after securing a tenure-track job, male assistant professors are 23 percent more

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n are often rejecting the idea of working at an elite university for fear they will not have time for their families if they get involved in a high-driven career. Some women need to satisfy their personal as well as much as their career goals, and so shy away from high-pressure departments where their career will become the major emphasis in their life. They leave those jobs to women who want to make their career their life and give it 100 percent of their time. However, some women fear that this uneven sampling of views in research leaves areas of problems untouched, and a diversity of viewpoints is needed in research (Wilson, 2004). Women at the University of California complained after the number of female hires on the system's campuses dropped sharply in the late 1990s. Female professors pressured the California Legislature into holding hearings on the issue, and the system started hiring more women. Senior females on the faculty of Harvard wrote a letter to the president of the university in 2003 complaining that only four of 32 tenured job offers made in arts and science by the university that year went to women. Offers of tenure to women at Harvard have been falling since 2001. However, after recent remarks by p

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